Category: World News

HAMILTON, Ontario — One in five children suffers from a mental disorder — with notable increases in depression and anxiety over the past 30 years — yet less than one-third have had contact with a mental healthcare provider, a new study finds.  Results from the 2014 Ontario Child Health Study actually mirror findings from a similar study conducted in 1983, but this latest version shows a higher proportion of children and youth with disorders have had contact with health providers and in other settings, usually via schools.  The new study also found that the patterns of prevalence among different genders and age groups have changed. Specifically, hyperactivity disorders in boys between four and 11 years old spiked from 9% to 16%. Conversely, there was a significant decrease in disruptive behavior in boys 12 to 16 years old, with numbers from 10% to 3%.

Researchers also found a significant increase in anxiety and depression in male and female youth. That total jumped from 9% in 1983 to 13% in the 2014 study.  There was also a notable rise — from 7% to 19% — in the perceptions of need for professional help with mental health disorders. However, the researchers wrote it was difficult to determine if this is tied to the growing prominence of anti-stigma and mental health awareness over the past 30 years.  In that time, the prevalence of all mental disorders increased in communities with a population of 1,000 to 100,000, not in large urban areas. There was strong evidence suggesting that poor children are more likely to have a mental disorder if their neighborhood is more violent than others.

The study also revealed that in the past year, over 8% of youth thought about suicide, and 4% reported a suicide attempt.  The study included 10,802 children and youth between the ages of four and 17 from 6,537 families in Ontario. The sample size was much larger than the study conducted in 1983, when 3,290 children from 1,869 families participated.  “This is a very robust study we feel represents the situation in Canada,” says Michael Boyle, co-principal investigator of the study, in a statement. “That means there are more than a million Canadian children and youth with a mental health problem. This needs to be addressed.”

Eight papers, each focused on a different aspect of 2014 OCHS data, were published simultaneously in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.

The architectural and artistic feats of the ancient Egyptians never cease to amaze not only in the creation but in their preservation. Recently the country’s Ministry of Antiquities, Khaled al-Enani, revealed a “new” well-preserved tomb decorated with inscriptions and colorful reliefs. The archeological discover dates back more than 4,000 years – yet the vibrant paint of the reliefs look almost as fresh as the day they were painted.

The intricate tomb is said to belong to an official named Khuwy, a nobleman from the Fifth Dynasty, a period that spanned the 25th to the 24th century BCE. At the unveiling Minister al-Enani brought along 52 foreign ambassadors, cultural attachés, and well-known Egyptian actress Yosra, to inspect the vivid depictions.

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Leaked internal discussion threads from Google provided exclusively to Breitbart News show left-wing Google employees reporting one of their colleagues for alleged “leaks,” while worrying about the legal implications of cracking down on a conservative at the company over his public complaints about working conditions.  The discussion took place last week on the “transparency and ethics” discussion group, from which the alleged leaker had recently been ejected – a failed attempt to stem the tide of leaks showing political bias at the tech giant.  Announcing the ejection of the alleged leaker, a Google employee wrote that vigilance about leaks was “especially important in light of the recent leaks that named our friends and colleagues in Breitbart and the Daily Caller.”

“If you have any knowledge of someone else who definitely leaked from THIS group, be sure to report it at go/stop-leaks,” wrote another Google software developer, referring to an internal messaging system for reporting potential leaks.  “I noticed a certain someone who leaked from this group still works here. Is that the new norm? Is there something specific that makes his leak okay? What’s up with all this” wrote a different employee.  Another Google software engineer said that it would set “an incredibly bad precedent if he is not terminated in light of acknowledging responsibility for the leak.”

The “leak” in question was a Medium post by conservative Google software engineer Mike Wacker. In the post, the employee published anonymized messages from inside the company to draw attention to hostile working conditions faced by employees who express non-leftwing opinions at Google.  Leftists at Google are now also blaming Wacker for the leak of messages from the transparency and ethics discussion group about Kay Coles James, the conservative voice on Google’s now-canceled AI advisory council. In the messages, Google employee accused the African-American grandmother and president of the Heritage Foundation of being a “vocal bigot” who supported “exterminationist views.”

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Pop icon Cher said Sunday that Los Angeles, California, “can’t take care of its own” residents, much less newly arrived illegal and legal immigrants.

Cher said she failed to understand how the city of Los Angeles in the sanctuary state of California could afford to admit and take care of any more immigrants when city officials have failed to care for homeless, veterans, and poverty-stricken Americans.

“I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More,” Cher said.

The post came after President Trump threatened to bus border crossers and illegal aliens into sanctuary cities and states, like California, if the country’s asylum laws were not changed. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that the White House is considering the plan.

In response, Democrat mayors across the country — like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf — have welcomed bringing illegal aliens and border crossers to their cities.

While left-wing mayors say they will continue to admit any and all illegal and legal immigrants, Los Angeles is home to the second largest homeless population in the country, second to only New York City. About 50,000 residents of Los Angeles are homeless and about 7.5 percent of California’s American Veteran population is homeless.

As the city remains crippled by homelessness and skyrocketing housing costs, Los Angeles metro area is also home to the second largest illegal alien population — with nearly a million illegal aliens living in the region, according to Pew Research Center.

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The world’s largest airplane took flight for the first time ever on Saturday morning. Built by rocket launch company Stratolaunch, the 500,000-pound plane with a 385-foot wingspan lifted off shortly after 10AM ET from Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California. It was a critical first test flight for the aircraft, designed to launch rockets into orbit from the air. The inaugural flight lasted for 150 minutes, according to the company, after which the plane safely landed.

The dual-fuselage Stratolaunch is designed to fly to an altitude of 35,000 feet, where it can drop rockets that ignite their engines and boost themselves into orbit around the planet. There is no rocket on this particular flight. But the company has already signed at least one customer, Northrop Grumman, which plans to use Stratolaunch to send its Pegasus XL rocket into space.

It was an emotional moment for me, personally, to watch this majestic bird take flight,” said Stratolaunch CEO Jean Floyd. The aircraft performed as expected, reaching a maximum speed of 175 miles per hour and a peak altitude of 15,000 feet.

“The flight itself was smooth, which is exactly what you want a first flight to be,” said test pilot Evan Thomas. During the first phase of the flight, Stratolaunch tested the airplane’s handling qualities. “It flew very much like we had simulated and like we predicted,” he said. According to Stratolaunch, the plane’s systems “ran like a watch” and that the aircraft landed “on the mark” after a few low passes.

Today’s flight comes just three months after Stratolaunch laid off “more than 50” employeesand canceled efforts to develop its own rockets. Originally, the company had planned to build a whole suite of rockets, including a spaceplane. The change in plans was reportedly sparked by the death of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who started Stratolaunch in 2011.

Allen’s name came up frequently during today’s press call “Without a doubt, he would have been exceptionally proud to see his aircraft take flight,” said Floyd. “Even though he wasn’t there today, I did whisper a ‘thank you.’’

Stratolaunch did not take questions during the press call and made no mention of what comes next for the aircraft.

The road to today’s launch involved a number of incremental tests over the last few years, including the initial rollout and an engine test in 2017, and a number of taxis down the runway in Mojave at various speeds.

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China is planning to send millions of youth “volunteers” back to villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao’s brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.  The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to “rural zones” by 2022 in order to “increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology”, according to a Communist party document.  The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the state-run Global Times daily on Thursday.

Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily. Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of “young intellectuals” into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade.  “Has it started again?” wondered one user named WangTingYu. “We did that 40 years ago,” wrote Miruirong. “Sometimes history advances, sometimes it retreats,” noted KalsangWangduTB.  President Xi Jinping, known for his nostalgia for the Mao era, himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.

Dreams for a connected global internet are increasingly threatened by regulations being brought in by governments around the world, experts have warned.  Plans to restrict content are fragmenting the world wide web, a system created with the promise of connecting people by offering universal access to information.  China has walled off some western services for years and experts are now warning over plans elsewhere in the world to filter content, leading to nationalised internets.  That includes the UK’s plans to hold executives personally liable for posts on social media that are harmful or illegal, revealed in a government white paper on Monday.

They say this would put the country at the ‘far end’ of internet censorship and further fuel the ‘splinternet’ – a term circulated for a decade or more that has gained popularity in recent months.  These moves come as Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has called for a ‘common global framework’ of internet rules.  The web’s creator Tim Berners Lee has also launched a ‘Contract for the Web’ that establishes an ethical set of principles for the internet.  The New Zealand Christchurch mosques massacre live streamed online has heightened the sense of urgency in some countries, with debates in the US and EU on curbing incitement to violence.

A new Australian law could jail social media executives for failing to take down violent extremist content quickly.  And a proposal unveiled in Britain could make executives personally liable for harmful content posted on social platforms.  Free-speech defenders warn it would be dangerous to let governments regulate online content, even if social media sites are struggling.  The UK proposal ‘is a very bad look for a rights-respecting democracy,’ said R David Edelman, a former White House technology adviser who now heads the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s project on technology, the economy and national security.  ‘It would place the UK toward the far end of the internet censorship spectrum.’  However, the UK’s Culture Secretary has said that the proposed laws will not limit press freedom.  In a letter to the Society of Editors yesterday, Jeremy Wright vowed that ‘journalistic or editorial content would not be affected’ by the proposals.  And he reassured free speech advocates by saying there would be safeguards to protect the role of the press.

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MORAGA (KPIX 5) — An East Bay neighborhood’s fight against 5G is the topic of a town council meeting scheduled for Wednesday night. Moraga residents are expected to turn out and demand the city do more to protect people from cell phone radiation exposure.

It is a fight that’s been going on across the country and has been particularly heated in the East Bay. Ellie Marks has been outspoken against 5G and cell phone companies for 11 years now.

“We may not see the full ramifications of this for 20-30 years. How can we just fly blindly into this? It doesn’t make sense,” Marks said.

Her fight began when her husband developed a brain tumor on the right side of his head back in 2008. She says he was a heavy cell phone user since 1986.

“He used it all the time; held it right to his right ear and the tumor developed right where he held the phone,” Marks said.

Fortunately her husband survived, but she says it was her wake-up call. Ever since then, she’s been touring the country, organizing against the spread of cell phone towers and raising awareness about increased exposure to radio frequency.xa

The FCC and cell phone companies all maintain RF exposure we receive from cell phones is well within safe levels.

“The FCC is lying to the general public,” Marks countered.

“So far every major study concludes it [5G] is not having a harmful impact,” CNET Editor at Large Ian Sherr said.

Sherr has been following the launch of 5G and the race to beat China to a full 5G launch.

Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening. Sometimes, someone is. Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant power.

Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better.

The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Buchares

Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employ

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• Wikileaks founder dragged from Ecuadorian Embassy in handcuffs by large group of police officers yesterday
• He has not left embassy since 2012, when he was offered refuge from allegations of sexual assault in Sweden 
• Arrest was for skipping bail that year and also for a US extradition request over computer hacking charges 
• Ecuador said decision came after he behaved badly and interfered with its affairs during his seven-year stay
• Appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court where he was found guilty of breaching bail conditions in 2012
• He faces a further court hearing in May relating to his possible extradition to the US on the hacking charges 
• But the US is reportedly set to file further charges in the coming days that could see him in jail for decades  
• Corbyn told Government not to extradite Assange for ‘exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan’

Julian Assange is facing decades in an American prison for espionage after he was arrested and hauled kicking and screaming out of his Ecuadorian Embassy bolthole yesterday.

In extraordinary scenes, eight policemen had to drag the bearded and dishevelled WikiLeaks founder to a waiting police van as he ranted about Donald Trump and screamed ‘the UK has no civility’.

His arrest came after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status, saying it was tired of his ‘discourteous’ behaviour and poor personal hygiene, which reportedly included smearing faeces on the walls of the country’s London embassy.

As well as the prospect of a year in a UK jail for breaching bail, Assange faces extradition to the United States and a renewed rape investigation in Sweden. Following his arrest, the 47-year-old was charged by the American government with hacking 750,000 classified documents, which carries a five-year sentence.

But US authorities are reportedly set to file further charges in the coming days, including espionage, which can carry a 20-year sentence. As the country submitted an extradition request, a US senator yesterday boasted ‘he’s our property’.

Following his arrest, Assange was hauled to Westminster magistrates’ court yesterday afternoon where a judge branded him a ‘narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests’. He denied skipping bail in 2012 but was found guilty after the judge branded his defence ‘laughable’. Assange had tried to claim he breached his bail conditions because he couldn’t be guaranteed a fair trial in the UK.

The former hacker now faces a maximum sentence of one year in a British jail, likely to be Wandsworth prison in south London. This would see him serve six months before a fight over his extradition to the US begins. Experts say that process could take up to two years.

Meanwhile Swedish prosecutors said they would consider restarting the rape investigation which caused Assange to first seek refuge in the embassy. The alleged victim’s lawyer declared she would ‘do all we can’ to get the case reopened. A second woman, who accused Assange of sexual assault, said she was willing to appear as a witness.

Assange’s arrest came just 24 hours after Wikileaks had accused Ecuador of an ‘extensive spying operation’, adding that it assumed intelligence had been handed over to the Trump administration.

Mr Trump, who had declared ‘I love WikiLeaks’ during his 2016 campaign when the website released damaging emails concerning Hillary Clinton, said following Assange’s arrest that ‘I know nothing really about him’.

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